Religion News Service features a series of commentaries by experts on the probable military strike against Syria. The panel includes theologians, policy experts whether the U.S. should intervene in Syria in light of the region’s use of cheminal weapons against civilians. Among the experts is Global Experts member Qamar-ul Huda.

There are very good reasons to doubt that a revived peace process will deliver a two-state deal, or even much by way of progress. Kerry’s statement was rife with uncertainty regarding exactly when the talks would happen, and what agenda they would address. Nor does it help that Israeli government ministers rushed to retake pledges of loyalty to the settlement project, or that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will sit down at the negotiating table without any of the prerequisites he had outlined as the basis for a meaningful process.

“Why have Muslims not condemned terrorism?” This question is a seemingly permanent fixture in the question-and-answer sessions I address after public forums. After responding to this query for more than a decade, I am torn between bewilderment and grief: bewilderment at the willful ignorance required to miss the thousands of official Muslim statements, opinion editorials, and formal religious edicts denouncing terrorism that have been issued regularly since the horrendous attacks of 9/11; grief at the prejudice that makes these pronouncements necessary.

It’s midnight in Cairo. Literally. President Mursi is droning on and on while I have been trying to sort out some of my thoughts on the computer keyboard before me. Egypt’s President is asserting his legitimacy over, and over, and over again – sort of makes illegitimacy attractive by comparison. And it’s Near Midnight for the hour of decision.

The toppling of president Mohamed Morsi and his Freedom and Justice Party in Egypt last week has raised a host of deep and difficult questions about the future of politicised religion in general, and political Islam in particular. For starters, it has posed us with the singular query: if the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt now feels that the democratic path is not the means to attain state capture, would this induce some of them to abandon the democratic process altogether and opt for other, perhaps extra-constitutional, means to come to power?

The US and Russia are not on the best of terms these days. A meeting between the US President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin on the margins of the G8 summit on June 17 did not go particularly well. The two leaders are miles apart on Syria, and remain divided over missile defense, human rights and a host of other issues.